


red dead redemption

by crowroad



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s11e17 Red Meat, Fever, Flashbacks, Hurt Dean Winchester, Hurt Sam Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, Men of Letters Bunker, Post-Episode: s11e17 Red Meat, Protective Dean Winchester, Sharing a Bed, Sick Sam Winchester, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-02
Updated: 2018-05-02
Packaged: 2019-05-01 03:39:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14511735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crowroad/pseuds/crowroad
Summary: One bullet hole, one smothering, one overdose, two deaths.Lead him to the memory foam, make him drink.(For  theohsam birthday meme prompt: Dean caring for Sam in the Bunker after "Red Meat.")





	red dead redemption

 

 

Asking each other why isn't the way to go, never has been, but it's hard, harder than usual this time because:

 

one bullet hole

one overdose

one smothering

two deaths.

 

Sort of, Sam says. His pulse is a little off. He needs topping up. Get him some of that beet crap he drinks sometimes, stuff that leaves his mouth ringed with red. Unnerving.

Dean won't say: 

makes you look like you've fallen back on old habits

or worse, like a wolf.

 

Think about a little kid biting into a jam sandwich. No peanut butter left, not even the government surplus.

Dean? Sam says. He's in bed. Or--he's supposed to be but he's shuffling down the bunker's hum, green in the overheads. Dean catches him around the waist. Still so easy, like he's still small, like there ain't a thousand-hurt map to mind. 

Detours.

Sam's ribs are kind of hot. 

Come on, Dean says. Lead him to the memory (foam). Make him drink.

Why--Sam says, and then remembers the silent accord, seems to. It's the fever. Body's had it, that's all. Dean's too but he's not even fuzzy from all of that. All of those ... whatever they were that he swallowed and the disgusting aftermath. It doesn't make sense but when have they ever.

Why're we in your room, Sam says. Like he hadn't noticed. Like they were just gonna keep shuffling, lunatic undead, 'til the walls wore away and the prairie took them. 

Because you're gonna sleep, Dean says. Put Sam on the mattress, sitting, degree of difficulty -- well, whatever. Mind the wounds all the way down. 

Sam looks up at him like--

I'm fine, right?

Dean shoves a pillow under, another and another 'til the hot spots are guarded, 'til his brother's lifted and lowered like he should be: for blood, for breathing, for--

Blanket? Sam's saying, and that's a sign. 

Dean tells him to stay, fetches one, light wool; antibiotics, water, some of that red stuff. OK. Clean, dark-gray, man-of-letters washcloth. 

Sam's out when he gets back and it's all easy but the pill-swallowing. Which.

It ain't the first time.

*****

Sam doesn't wake up screaming but Dean does. It's a surprise. The way Billie was a surprise, always would be even when you called her; death catching you with your pants off even when you took them--

off yourself.

Dean? 

Dean's throat hurts and his breath's in his broke ribs and he knows.

Sorry, Sammy.

You were saying something about--

I was back in the woods, Dean says, just a flashback.

He doesn't mean Purgatory. 

Sam shifts, makes a pained sound, knee bumping the small of Dean's back, limbs crossing Dean's cover.

Take it easy, Dean says. Clears his throat for good measure: Just go back to sleep. 

Sam does.

Dean doesn't.

*****

Until morning, that is. Jerky wake-up to an empty nest, Sam's damp tee stripped and dropped at the end of the bed.

Jump up, robe, gun; find Sam in the kitchen, re-dressed in sweats over some cornflakes. Kinda pale, wet-haired, harsh neckline.

How're you feelin', Dean says.

Better, Sam says. Hand's resting over the entrance, the abrasion. Fingermarks.  _Lividity._  Freakin' overgrown crime scene. Dean almost says it aloud.

Really? he says instead, 'cause you were kind of out of it last night.

Sam's brow says,  _I wasn't the one with the night terrors._ It's cool to the touch, though. He lets Dean once him over. Calm. Like a front came through. 

Why'd you do it, Sam says. Dean's hand stops over the bandage, fumbles the tape:

Do what?

You know, Sam says. He doesn't sound pissed. More:  _kind of comforting that you saw me dead and that was your worst nightmare_. More: _our lives are fucked up, amirite?_

Not gonna lie, Dean says, I did before because--

Because you knew I'd be-- Sam says, stops.

Well, yeah.

*****

Dean makes soup, no meat. Butters up cornbread. 

Sam reads in the library, flushed. Lets Dean bring him a sweatshirt; shrugs off everything else, tells Dean he's the one who needs rest. Sits sloped in his hood in a way he hasn't in a long while, making Dean's throat catch with memory--Cold Oak, a straight runnel of dread between rain-soaked Dakota alkali and the damp planks of that Idaho cabin. Detour for Stull. Same sick suckerpunch, worst he's ever felt, even in all those years of hell.

If Dean dreams of Corbin's canines, Michelle's sad eyes, his ridiculous bloody brother stumbling in that long hall, Billie's  _not dead not dead_ \--he doesn't tell Sam, but Sam knows; no effort to see it. Silent, the way they like it, hands drumming and itching, the raw parts stripped and knitting, closing and scarring, letting them go on. Infinite tissue. Things knitting together underneath.

You died reckless, Sam said,  _again._

Fresh cut of an old track. 

*****

Dean doesn't go looking for trouble, so doesn't say, not even to himself, how this time is different, if it is at all. Sit in the kitchen. Set up the last of the Yukon blend, think when they might supply-run, when the sun might shine on Baby's back all the way down to Wichita.

Sam's slept all night, got boots on with sweats and a star in the corner of each eye again. Cuts darkening up; chokemarks going green as summer.

Dean pours him a cup, thinks about what it might have been like, had Sam gone down when darkness hit, with the black vines riding his veins, scenting the air for fresh meat before he went, rabid and gone, never to know his brother again. What it might have been like if he just--

went.

When I saw you, Dean says, there on the floor--

Yeah, Sam says, I know.

Dean takes the bullet he dug out of his brother out of his robe pocket, cups it, heavy and clean in his hand:

I was gonna hold onto this, but maybe we should--

_thing is cursed, bad-broke, ready to tear its way back into whatever flesh it can find like a heart-seeking ..._

No, Sam says, let's keep it,  and he puts out a palm for it, the one with the faint track that all those years ago Dean's steady hand stitched up.

In these days when Darkness is the wolf at everyone's door--

 

_joy comes in the morning._

 

Dean says: 

Why do you want it if--

We got off easy, Sam says.

That's why.


End file.
